His Highest Flights Of Imagination, However,
Probably Fail To Transplant Him Very Far Beyond The Actual Wilderness
Which Bounds His Mortal Vision, While Pudmawutee And Oonmadinee,
As Here Depicted By His Own Artistic Skill, Present, In All Their
Loveliness Of Form And Feature, His Best Conceptions Of Ideal Worth
And Beauty.
No wonder, therefore, that the reality of
"Those roses, the brightest that earth ever gave,
Those grottoes and gardens and fountains so clear!"
and above all of -
"Those love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave,"[11]
should shed its influence largely on his imagination, and that,
in contrast to his own dry and dusty native plains, Cashmere should
well be called the Hindoo's Paradise.
JULY 15. - Marched at dawn for Vernagh, a distance of eight kos,
rather over a Sabbath-day's journey. Here we had to wait a considerable
time for our breakfast, the cook being an indifferent pedestrian and
the day a very hot one. The baradurree was curiously built, close to
an octagon tank, the water from which ran at a great pace through an
arch in the middle of the house.[12] The tank was supplied with
water in great volume, but
from no apparent source, and was filled with fine fish, all sacred,
and as fat as butter, from the plentiful support they receive from the
devout among the Hindoos, not to mention the unbelieving travellers,
who also supply them for amusement. The tank itself, the natives
informed us, was bottomless, and it really appeared to be so; for
from the windows of the baradurree, some fifty feet over the water,
we could see the sides stretching back as they descended, and losing
themselves in the clear water, which looked, from the intensity of
its blue, both deep and treacherous to an unlimited extent. The water,
too, was so intensely, icily cold, that an attempt to swim across it
would have been a dangerous undertaking, and neither F. nor I could
summon courage to jump in. We, however, bathed in the stream which
ran out of the inexhaustible reservoir, and its effect we found very
similar to that of hot water, so that a little of it went a very Iong
way with us. As for the fish, they swarmed in such numbers that they
jostled each other fairly out of the water in a dense living mass,
while striving for grains of rice and bread.
This also was a favourite resort of Jehangeer and Noor Jehan; and I
found an inscription in the Persian character which, in a sentence
according to Eastern custom, fixed the date of the erection of the
building attached to the tank as A.H. 1029, or, about A.D. 1612. The
inscription runs thus: -
"The king of seven climes, the spreader of justice, Abdool, Muzuffer,
Noor-ul-deen[13] Jehangeer Badshah, son of Akbar, conqueror of kings,
on the day of the 11th year of his reign paid a visit to this fountain
of favour, and by his order this building has been completed.
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